 Bob Gramsma: Local aesthesia, OI#0497, 2004 medical "privacy" screens, anesthetic equipment, iv pal, tubes and medical bottles. The setting is applying local anesthesia directly into the structure of the building itself A.B.NORMAL Tim Hawkinson, John Bock, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Josephine Meckseper, Bob Gramsma, Chris Hanson, Hendrika Sonnenberg Dr. Frankenstein: Would you mind telling me… whose brain… I did put in? Igor: And you won't be angry? Dr. Frankenstein: I will not… be… angry. Igor: Abby someone. Dr. Frankenstein: Abby someone… Abby who? Igor: Abby Normal. Dr. Frankenstein: Abby Normal. Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name. Mel Brooks, from the film "Young Frankenstein" The voice of Gene Wilder howling "It's alive!" echoes the work of John Bock, Bob Gramsma, Chris Hanson, Hendrika Sonnenberg, Tim Hawkinson, Josephine Meckseper and Rirkrit Tiravanija. With masterful timing, each puts the "d" in deadpan. From the popcorn-spewing pants of John Bock; to the buttons on Tim Hawkinson's pile of laundry that metamorphosize into paranoid eyes tracking the viewer's every move; to the anesthetizing of the building with a morphine drip in Bob Gramsma's mysterious surgery prep piece; to Josephine Meckseper's "unfashionable" faux-pas displaying a playful, artistic anti-ego; to Rirkrit Tiravanija's worship of Sponge Bob-ian utopia; to Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg's full-scale polystyrene Zamboni, it is a close encounter of the fourth kind. If Frankenstein were in search of a brain, then these works, full of grey matter, all seem to be in search of a body that never quite materializes but is nonetheless eerily present. In a room thick with obsession, mania, dementia, pathos, inventiveness and empathy, these artists summon the ghosts of our time. Exhibition: June 23 - September 10, 2005 Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 11am - 6pm NYEHAUS 15 Gramercy Park South, #8D USA-New York, NY 10003 Telephone +1 212 995 1785 Fax +1 212 473 4994 Email info@nyehaus.com www.nyehaus.com |
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